Reconstructed setting· The columns of time

Empires and roads

801 BCE → 1450

This backdrop shows two millennia of long-distance travel: colonnades and an aqueduct, a square-rigged ship and a camel caravan, bell towers and minarets behind.

Backdrop representing two millennia of long-distance circulation: colonnades and aqueduct, square-rigged ship and camel caravan, bell towers and minarets rising in the background.

What the evidence shows

The architecture depicted is that of Mediterranean antiquity. The aqueduct figures there for a determined reason: it constitutes the visible mark of a state capable of conceiving a public work, levying the tax that finances it and maintaining it over several centuries. The ship and the caravan represent the second aspect of the period, maritime routes and the silk roads having connected Eurasia from end to end throughout its duration. Bell towers and minarets appear only in the recent part of the band, after 500 CE, and signal that the period does not stop at the end of the Western Roman Empire.

Bounds and conventions

This is the most Europe-centred backdrop on the timeline, and the one covering the longest span. Han and Tang China, the Gupta empire and the gold states of the Sahel belong to these centuries as much as Rome and are not represented.